"The Mystique of Transmission" is a close reading of a
late-eighth-century Chan/Zen Buddhist hagiographical work, the
"Lidai fabao ji" ( "Record of the Dharma-Jewel Through the
Generations"), and is its first English translation. The text is
the only remaining relic of the little-known Bao Tang Chan school
of Sichuan, and combines a sectarian history of Buddhism and Chan
in China with an account of the eighth-century Chan master Wuzhu in
Sichuan.
Chinese religions scholar Wendi Adamek compares the "Lidai fabao
ji" with other sources from the fourth through eighth centuries,
chronicling changes in the doctrines and practices involved in
transmitting medieval Chinese Buddhist teachings. While Adamek is
concerned with familiar Chan themes like patriarchal genealogies
and the ideology of sudden enlightenment, she also highlights
topics that make "Lidai fabao ji" distinctive: formless practice,
the inclusion of female practitioners, the influence of Daoist
metaphysics, and connections with early Tibetan Buddhism.
The "Lidai fabao ji" was unearthed in the early twentieth
century in the Mogao caves at the Silk Road oasis of Dunhuang in
northwestern China. Discovery of the Dunhuang manuscripts has been
compared with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as these
documents have radically changed our understanding of medieval
China and Buddhism. A crucial volume for students and scholars,
"The Mystique of Transmission" offers a rare glimpse of a lost
world and fills an important gap in the timeline of Chinese and
Buddhist history.
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